Masters of glass create models of sea creatures

Chris Bergeron

Saturday

Mar 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMMar 29, 2008 at 12:36 PM

It makes perfect sense that a 19th-century German glass artisan with a pet snail named Lotte -- who kept the pet's shell in an ornate box after she died -- devoted his life to capturing the ephemeral anatomies of nature's most elusive sea creatures.

It makes perfect sense that a 19th-century German glass artisan with a pet snail named Lotte -- who kept the pet's shell in an ornate box after she died -- devoted his life to capturing the ephemeral anatomies of nature's most elusive sea creatures.

Nearly 60 glass models of marine invertebrates made by Blaschka and his father, Leopold, now exhibited at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, reveal the peerless skill of two differently tempered artisans who created wondrous art.

Organized by museum staff, "Sea Creatures in Glass" showcases the Blaschkas' unique work that began as zoological specimens yet remains today as rare objects of art. Through these remarkable objects, the Blaschkas emerge as fascinating and elusive as the creatures they re-created in glass.

Observe the impossibly delicate tentacles of a sea jelly molded in glass as fine as a kitten's whiskers. So precisely crafted it seems alive, the segmented thorax of a fan worm ends in a "crown" of green and red sprouts. The red-speckled squid appears as juicy as the fried ones my wife and I ordered at Chef Chen's.

Director of Exhibitions Jan Sacco said the Blaschkas "reproduced nature's art through their own art."

"This is extraordinary glass artistry," Sacco said. "I don't know anything else like it. You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone making such lifelike models the way they did."

The 58 mostly life-size works on display were drawn from the Museum of Comparative Zoology's collection of 430 of the Blaschkas' glass invertebrates, including jellyfish, anemones, sea slugs, polyps and many other specimens.

When Harvard first acquired the Blaschkas' glass specimens, Sacco said they were important tools for teaching zoology because, unlike actual creatures preserved in formaldehyde, they didn't lose their color or collapse.

Even today, she said, James Hanken, director of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, considers them "still scientifically pretty darn exact."

Sacco said the 58 models on display were chosen "to show a wide range of different animals and some of our most spectacular pieces."

A glass conservator is cleaning the rest of the collection and restoring several pieces that are either broken or have "degraded" over time as the animal-based glue wears out. The exhibit will run through January 2009.

The exhibit also includes the family's workbench with a foot-operated bellows and very basic tools, like pliers and tweezers, as well as the glass eyes and jewelry they made before focusing on plant and animal reproductions. Also on display are reference materials the Blaschkas used to ensure their models' accuracy.

Visitors should watch and listen to a seven-minute video by the Corning Institute of Glass that provides a very helpful time frame to the Blaschkas life and achievements.

In many ways, the father and son were as fascinating as the plants and animals they preserved in glass. Initially a jewelry maker, Leopold was living a reclusive life after the death of his first wife from cholera when he began sketching jellyfish while the ship he was sailing on to visit America was becalmed for two weeks.

After remarrying, he had a son -- his only child -- and spent years teaching himself to make glass flowers and marine specimens.

Joining his father in business at 19, Rudolph also immersed himself in his zoological studies providing a new impetus that made their commercial ventures more profitable. Although easy to miss, perhaps the most revealing object on display is a snail shell with its distinctive "left-turning helix" pattern in a little round box titled "Lotte." From wall text, visitors learn, Rudolph, then 57, found the unusual snail in his garden and "raised" it for eight years before it died "a natural death" in 1922 at an estimated age of 12 years.

While the two are not formally connected, visiting "Sea Creatures" provides a great chance to see Henry Horenstein's 15 striking black-and-white photographs of an unlikely menageries of giant mammals, preening birds and exotic sea creatures in the adjoining gallery.

By observing its subjects so closely, "Looking at Animals: Photographs by Henry Horenstein" celebrates the functional perfection of a rhino's fly swatter tail or a long-nosed skate's fins.

Shooting large-format closeups, Horenstein captures the strange and beautiful utility of elephant toenails as big as basketballs and rhino hide as mottled as a pineapple. A professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, Horenstein said animals are "arguably the most compelling subjects of all."

Aiming to avoid mere documentation, he used a macro lens to focus on curious anatomical details, like the perfectly named Lookdown Fish, whose eyes are set so high in its forehead it looks like a fat man trying to see his chin.

Artistic cousins separated by a century, the Blaschkas and Horenstein employ different tools and approaches to lovingly capture totally different animal subjects with curiously similar results.

Additionally, both shows are just steps away from the HMNH's ongoing exhibit of the Blaschkas' crowning achievement, the spectacular "glass flowers" exhibit, formally titled the Ware Collection of Glass Models of Plants, the only such display in the world.

From 1886 through 1936, the Blaschkas made 3,000 one-of-a-kind glass models of 847 plant species exclusively for Harvard. Noting Leopold died in 1895, Sacco said Rudolph made the bulk of the glass flowers and generally displayed more innovation than his father and a greater eye for detail.

"While there aren't enough glass invertebrates to see differences, there's a clear difference in the earlier flower models (made by father and son) and later models made only by Rudolph," said Sacco. "I think Rudolph was a bit more obsessed, particularly with color and detail. He studied zoology very closely and took more time with detail and color. And he was more willing to take risks."

Visitors won't get stung by a Portuguese man-of-war or step in elephant poop. The only risk is missing these rewarding shows.

ESSENTIALS:

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is located on 26 Oxford St., Cambridge.

All the HMNH exhibits are open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The museum is closed New Year's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Day.

Other exhibits include "Nests & Eggs" through August 2008 and "Arthropods: Creatures that Rule" which is ongoing.

Tickets: Adults, $9; seniors and non-Harvard students, $7; children, 3-18, $6. It is free to Massachusetts residents Sunday mornings from 9 a.m. to noon and Wednesday afternoon from 3 to 5 p.m., September through May.

The museum is wheelchair accessible. For more information, call 617-495-3045 or visit the Internet Web site, www.hmnh.harvard.edu.

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